October 28, 2003 08:26 AM

Broken: Citrus juicer

Amy Laskin writes:

This juicer has a simple design: press and turn the half-lemon against
the ribbed dome and the tray catches the juice. The fence of teeth will
catch the accumulated seeds when you pour the juice out of the spout.
Voila! Seedless juice.

The broken part? The sharp, pointed teeth are located precisely where
the first knuckle and cuticle of your fingers will land if you press
and turn a lemon! In other words, as you juice, you firmly scrape your
knuckles against the sharp pointy teeth. Bonus for the lemon juice that
then gets into the fresh wound. Ouch!

Um, maybe in this case its a case of the person holding it wrong. Seems to me that it would be easier to use by holding the juicer in your left hand with the spout pointing downwards towards the bowl/piece of fish/open wound where you want the lemon juice to go. Then twist the lemon on the pointy juicer bit with the right hand. If used like this, the design doesn't seem so bad to me.

Posted by: Jim at October 30, 2003 10:35 PM

I was going to say the same thing... I guess the manufacturer could always put "fingers on this side!" and jack up the price for having to add a sticker or mold the warning into the plastic. ;-)

I understand what you're saying, but I assure you, I tried it that way. It's almost impossible to get any juice out of the fruit without some kind of turning, which inevitably brings at the very least the top of the thumb across the teeth. If you are very slow and cautious, you can turn the lemon only within the small angle of protection, back and forth. But that doesn't make this a very usable juicer.

Posted by: Amy Laskin at October 31, 2003 10:51 AM

Maybe they should have just attached a Band-Aid holder on the side. The broken design comes equipped with the fix :)

This device can be made from a single simple molding. Putting a bar over the things that strain the seeds or drilling holes sideways through a divider to form a collander would drastically raise the manufacturing cost. But yee gads, you're right, those teeth look wicked. It seems like the manufacturer went out of his way to make them sharp, they could have been rounded off easily enough.

Maybe I'm wrong about the single molding part maybe the manufacturer had lots of these sharp cones of plastic left over from some other product and they're glued on or something.

Maybe the Chinese engineer who designed it lost a cousin in Nam and is trying to get revenge on capitalist orange juice lovers. You know the engineer, his Uncle invented packing tape.

I have a juicer similar to this one with rounded teeth, so that's not the problem. The problem with mine is that the level of the spout for pouring the juice out is not low enough: the juice (and seeds) flow over the top of the teeth. Picking lemon seeds out of hollandaise sauce when I should instead be whisking is a great way to wreck the Eggs Benedict.